Sam Hopkins / David Lalé

Sam Hopkins was born in 1979 in Rome (I) and raised in Kenya and England. He  studied History and Spanish in Edinburgh and Cuba, proceeded to postgraduate studies in Contemporary Art in Oxford and Weimar before returning to Nairobi in 2006. His artistic practice employs a diverse range of techniques to engage with the question of how narratives and truths are embedded, encoded and produced by different media. He co-initiated the grassroots media collective Slum TV, was a core member of the public space activists Urban Mirror and is a frequent collaborator of the Nairobi-based collective Maasai Mbili. Hopkins has participated in various international exhibitions, including biennales in Dakar (S) Poznan (PL) and Moscow (RU) and has exhibited at a wide range of museums and galleries, including Kunsthaus Bregenz (A) the Goodman Gallery (SA) and Richard Taittinger Gallery (USA). His work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian (US), Abteiberg Museum (D), the Iwalewahaus (D). In 2014 he was named one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy (FP) Magazine. He currently works between Cologne and Nairobi.

David Lalé is a film-maker and writer from the UK. He trained at the National Film & Television School, and started his career making documentaries for TV – including three films for Al Jazeera’s prestigious Witness series. His films have screened at international festivals including Berlin, Telluride, Camerimage, and Film Africa, and been awarded the WorldView Prize at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Main Prize at Paris Signes de Nuit, the International Press Prize at Clermont-Ferrand, as well as a special mention in competition at the Berlinale. Currently he works as an independent producer, pursuing experimental non-fiction projects. His recent works have been supported by UK Arts Council, Goethe Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film und Medien Stiftung NRW, British Council, US National Endowment for the Humanities, and  California Documentary Project.